Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation of the American World Order

Liberal Leviathan is a sequel. It follows the author’s earlier study of how international institutions and interconnectedness can lead to a more stable and prosperous international environment. That book, After Victory (2001), provocatively argued that the United States, as progenitor of the contemporary international system, could never effectively remove itself from the system it largely spawned after 1945. Having vanquished its major ideological threat during the Cold War and having long been motivated by the universality of its own ideology, American leaders would not, and more importantly could not, employ their power contrary to the rule of law and the pressure of international norms. Washington could not, in essence, go rogue, lest it face dramatic international rebuke. Then Washington did just what G. John Ikenberry argued against. The George W. Bush administration went rogue indeed, deploying unilateral force to the ire of the international community. Just as Ikenberry predicted before the attacks of September 11, 2001, hegemonic unilateralism prompted a significant decline in American long-term prestige and power. Beyond offering a healthy dose of restrained “I told you so,” Liberal Leviathan is largely Ikenberry’s attempt to understand the aftermath of Washington’s post-9/11 strategic blunder. As one of the most influential international relations theorists of our day, Ikenberry, and his powerful answer, should not surprise readers familiar with his large body of prior work: that the secret to a stable world system and to future American influence lies in international coalescence around the very institutions, laws, regulated markets, and to some extent shared values that Washington once helped forge.